While We Wait
by Come Lady Death
Summary: After the Andromeda is left without main power for a while, the crew decide to pass the time by telling secrets... Rated T for slight mention of adult themes, just to be safe.
1. Fun

The new crew of the Andromeda Ascendant sat around the Command deck, looking around forlornly at the dark displays. Every once in a while, someone would shoot a glare over at Harper. No one spoke.

Finally Harper broke the silence. "I said I was sorry already!"

Dylan sighed. "We know, Harper, we know."

But the engineer wouldn't quit. "You keep looking at me like I meant to do that! I mean, how was I to know that if you connect this to that, you get kablooey!" He traced an explosion in the air with his hands.

Rommie sat on the floor with her legs crossed Indian style under her. She looked up at the distressed engineer. "Well, you couldn't have picked a better time to blow out my main power. Hidden in a nebula, where no one can find us, it doesn't matter that we're dead in the water."

"Thanks, Rommie," Harper groaned, letting his head fall back against his chair back. "Cause that makes me feel so much better."

"Harper, don't you have something you can be fixing?" Beka asked pointedly. She was tired of the engineering moping around blaming everybody for blaming him.

"Nope, sorry Boss. Not until this ion storm passes, unless you want fricasseed Seamus."

Trance bounded up out of her seat suddenly. "I know!" Everyone turned to stare and she lost some of her bounce. "I mean, um, I thought of a way to pass the time, if anyone's interested."

Harper sat forward. "Anything's better than Six Degrees of Blaming Harper."

"What is your idea, Trance?" Rev Bem asked.

Trance motioned with her tail. "Well, since we're all still getting to know each other, I thought we could go around the room and everyone can share one strange or weird or funny things about themselves. Something that no one really knows about you." She looked around for encouragement or agreement.

Beka nodded. "Could be fun. What do you say, Seamus?"

"Again, anything's better than sitting around blaming me for everything. I'm in."

"Dylan?"

"Count me in."

"Rommie?"

"Okay."

"Rev?"

"I look forward to it."

"Tyr?"

Everyone turned to look at the Nietzschean. He sat with one leg draped over the arm of his chair and his chin resting on his open palm. He was trying to ignore the inane chatter around him, but it became difficult when Harper bounced a foam ear plug off of his head. "Come on, Tyr, it'll be fun."

"Fine," the Alpha finally agreed.

"Oh great," Trance bubbled, clapping her hands excitedly. "Who's first?"

They all looked at each other for a second before Dylan cleared his throat. "I guess I'll start." He thought about it for a minute, then said, "One of my hobbies on Tarn Vedra was horseback riding. I love riding horses, it's one of my favorite things."

"Your favorite thing to do is ride an extinct animal?" Tyr said with disdain.

"It wasn't extinct in my time, obviously. We had quite a few horses, my family and I. Mine was a Thoroughbred named Shekinah Glory. I rode her in competitions and I even won awards a few times."

Beka laughed at the revelation. "Gives a whole new meaning to 'space cowboy'," she giggled. Dylan threw her a half-serious glare.

"Come on, Beka, it's not that funny." Hunt gave the assembly the evil eye. "And if any one of you refer to me as 'space cowboy', ever, there will be blood."

Harper snapped his fingers sarcastically. "Oh rats, there goes my idea for dashing your treaty negotiations."

Dylan rolled his eyes. "Okay, that's me." He turned to the person seated to his right, which happened to be Beka Valentine. "Beka? Your turn."

She moaned and looked up at the ceiling. "Okay, something weird about me..."

"What isn't?" Harper muttered, and got a nasty look from Beka in response.

"Something you would never guess about me... I can sing. Pretty well, too," she added defensively when she saw eyebrows go up.

"Prove it," called out Harper. "You never sang on the Maru."

"I had time to do that when exactly?" she returned sharply.

"Come on, Beka, show us," Dylan coaxed her.

Huffing, the captain of the Eureka Maru sat up straighter in her seat and started to sing an old song from before the Commonwealth fell, one that her friend Abel Ladron had taught her.

_When the dark wood fell before me  
And all the paths were overgrown  
When the priests of pride say there is no other way  
I tilled the sorrows of stone_

_I did not believe because I could not see  
Though you came to me in the night  
When the dawn seemed forever lost  
You showed me your love in the light of the stars_

_Cast your eyes on the ocean  
Cast your soul to the sea  
When the dark night seems endless  
Please remember me_

Beka looked up at the shocked silent group and half-smiled, looking for a response. "I don't remember the rest," she offered shyly.

"That was beautiful, Beka," Trance told her. Everyone else hastened to agree and Beka sat back with a smirk.

"Told you. Anyway, Trance, your turn."

"Alright," said Harper in anticipation, shifting to face her. "Let's see what her purpleness has for us today."

Trance rolled her eyes at him. "Quit it, Seamus." She fidgeted with her tail for a while, thinking. Then she said, "I know this isn't much, but it's all I can think of." She looked down and smiled bashfully. "The word 'pudding' always makes me laugh." Even as she said it she started to giggle.

"Purple, sparkly, tail, don't know her race, where she came from, nothing, and pudding's all you've got for something strange?" Harper snorted in disbelief and she reached out and smacked him.

"Ow, hey!" But his eyes were bright with mischief. A beat passed before he said slyly, "Hey, Trance?" He waited until she looked up at him. Then he said very slowly, very deliberately...

"Pudding."

The purple alien fell into a heap of giggles and her laughter set off a chain reaction. Soon everyone was laughing and nobody really knew why. Recovering, gasping, Dylan flipped a hand at Harper. "Okay, Mr. Harper, you're up."

Harper's cocky grin blossomed into its usual place and he gave his answer without a shred of hesitation. "My favorite fruit is pineapple."

Beka frowned. "Seamus, the pineapple was wiped out two centuries ago. There's no way you could know you like it."

"Way," he said confidently. "Just so happens that Andromeda has a flowering pineapple bush in hydroponics. It was fruiting when we came aboard. Not anymore, by the way," he added as an aside to Rommie. "I dare you to find even one pineapple on that thing. I have laid claim to every single piece of that king of fruits."

She glowered at him. "I may hurt you."

The engineer tipped her a wink. "You know you love me." He swiveled to face Tyr. "Alright, big guy, you're up. What's your story?"

Tyr considered them all for a moment with expressionless brown eyes. Then he said simply, "I sleepwalk." He fell silent again. The crew stared at him. After a moment he turned to Rev Bem and commented, "Your turn."

"You sleepwalk?" said Harper incredulously. "What, that's it? No explanation? Nothing?"

"That would explain a couple of instances during the night in which-"

"Enough." Tyr cut off Rommie's musing on his somnambulent escapades and waved a preemptory hand at Rev. "Magog, your time has come."

"That sounds so final," muttered Harper. Trance nodded in agreement. They both subsided when the Nietzschean glared at them from over his shoulder.

Rev shrugged and spread his clawed hands. "Ever since I became a follower of the Way, I have had the desire to...to fly." In response to the quizzical looks, he explained, "I believe one could call it 'sky diving'."

"A sky diving Magog. Now I've seen everything."

"Harper!" admonished Beka.

"You're serious," asked Dylan, just to be sure. "You have a wish to sky dive?"

"Yes. It has always been an interest of mine. Perhaps I feel that as one is close to the sky, one is close to the Divine."

"There's also the 'I trust the Divine not to splat me on the ground' part," Harper added with a theatrical shudder.

Captain Hunt said, "Well, Rev, when we get the main power back up and running, we'll see if we can't find a nice M class planet we can drop you over."

Rev smiled. "Thank you Dylan. It would be a pleasure."

"Alright, Rom doll, you're last," Harper prompted. "Though I don't know what you can say, seeing as I know everything about you already."

"Keep thinking that, if it makes you happy," said Rommie frostily. "But I do happen to have a fact you may not be aware of."

"This I gotta see," he said cynically.

Rommie hesitated, drawing the moment out. "Out with it!" Dylan prodded impatiently.

"All right! It's not much, but it's the only thing I can think of that'll stump boy genius over there. I've discovered my favorite band. It's an old Earth Vedic metal group known as Rudra. I don't have very many recordings of their work, but what I have heard, I greatly enjoy."

"Define Vedic metal for us, please," Rev Bem requested.

Rommie searched for a different term, then said, "Hindu death metal."

Several someones burst into snickers. Rommie crossed her arms and glared at them, annoyed. "It's not funny. I like the music!"

"Oh, we don't doubt it," assured Trance between helpless giggles.

"It's just that that seems so unlike you," explained Beka.

"That was the point of this exercise, wasn't it? To find out things that we didn't know about each other before?"

"Yep," Harper agreed. "And I think it was a definite success."


	2. Truth

Trance wiped a stray strand of hair off of her face and sighed happily. "That was so fun! I had no idea you guys were so crazy!"

"It was a good idea, Trance," said Dylan. Everyone else heartily agreed; even, reluctantly, Tyr.

"Can we take it further?" she wanted to know.

"What do you have in mind?"

"Now we share one more thing about ourselves that no one knows. Something more serious. You only have to get personal if you feel comfortable with it. No joking with this," she added with a warning glare at Harper. He put up his hands in surrender. "Fine by me."

The idea was met with an uneasy silence. But there was a tacit agreement in the air and again it was for the captain to begin. Dylan leaned forward and clasped his hands in front of him.

"I've always been afraid of change," he said slowly. "I know that's strange and unexpected; I mean, I'm the one who's trying to restructure the known universe with only six people backing me up. But...if I'm honest, I'm restoring the Commonwealth half for the greater good and half for my own comfort.

"The Systems Commonwealth was always my home, all I'd ever known. The thought of the Fall, of suddenly being without my familiar home, terrified me. I'm trying to bring back the Commonwealth because...because I want to bring back what I knew and I don't want things to change."

Hunt fell silent and after a moment Beka picked up on her turn.

"I grew up on the _Eureka Maru_, you all know that. My mother and uncle both left us when I was young. My father was all I had for most of my childhood. He was good to me for the most part. Unless he'd been... unless he was..."

She trailed off and pressed her lips together. Trance almost started her turn before Valentine continued.

"He would chase me all over the ship and when he caught me..." Beka drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "He beat me badly. But the worst part was, he never remembered the next day. Every morning after he'd look at me and ask, 'Who did you like this, Bek?' I told him once that he did it. He got so angry at the idea that he would hurt his daughter that I never told him the truth again. But he did hurt me. Over and over until I was strong enough to fight him off.

"He was my father. But I couldn't be happier that he's dead."

Quiet reigned again, longer this time.

Finally Trance spoke up. "This seems a little silly beside Dylan and Beka's, but it's all I've got to say.

"I have a terrible fear of the Abyss. Of- of darkness, evil, and falling into nothing forever. I have awful nightmares where I'm trapped in darkness so deep you can feel it all around you and no light can ever exist." She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself tightly. "I'm so afraid that one day it'll finally get me. And I won't be able to escape."

Silence. Everyone looked to Harper, the next in line. The engineer sat looking at his hands, the fingers twisting in and out of each other. "Mr. Harper?" Dylan finally prompted gently.

"Yeah, okay," Harper muttered. "Um, you know by now that I'm kind of...well, easy, I guess. Somebody once told me that I'd probably flirt with a rock if it looked like a babe and it's not that far off. But...truth is...when it comes to actually...y'know, doing it...I'm scared."

"You're scared of sex?" Beka asked to clarify. She found that a little hard to believe.

"Yeah, no, that's not..." He sighed and looked up at the ceiling as if the answer was written up there. "I'm a guy, Bek. I want it just as much as the next guy. But I'm scared that when it comes right down to it, I'll...hurt her. I never want to hurt anybody that way," he added softly before going totally silent.

Most of the group were a little lost after that. But they respected Harper's desire to keep his secrets and didn't ask. Beka was the only one who could hazard a guess as to what the young man was alluding to. She'd heard stories of rape gangs on Earth that made her sick to her stomach. Seeking to distract attention from speculating over Seamus, she pulled off one of her wristbands and threw it at Tyr's head. "You're next," she reminded him.

The Nietzschean rubbed his head and scowled at her. "The next person to throw something at me will spend the night in the med bay," he threatened darkly. He thought about his answer for a long moment before speaking.

"The first time I ever killed a man was in the mines, when I was young. A guard was tormenting one of the young ones. Somehow, it made me so angry that I just..." Tyr made a slashing motion with his bone blades and everyone gave a collective wince.

"After it was done, I remember looking up at one of the older boys who looked after me and asking, 'Aguila, what happened? What did I do?'

"He looked down at me and told me, 'Justice, Tyr. That's called justice.'

"Aguila took the blame for the murder. I never saw him again. It was a long time before I realized what he'd done. And what I'd done." Anasazi shifted uncomfortably and reached over to nudge Rev Bem with his foot. "Go," he said quietly.

The Magog Reverend looked down, deep in thought, for a long while before he said in a low voice, "I am a father." He didn't add anything else, but no more was needed. Magog were a race whose reproductive habits were repulsive to say the least. They laid eggs within sentient hosts and when the time came, the larvae would eat their way out of the host. The confession turned everyone's stomach. But the look of Bem's face was so haunted that even Tyr Anasazi could not comment.

Once again, Rommie took up the final turn. "My single greatest fear is losing you, Dylan," she said, turning to face her captain. "You've been my captain for a long time. I've grown accustomed to your face. Your voice. Your presence. Your routine. Your quirks. The way you care about things in a way no one else can. You treat me like a person when another man might have treated me simply as a smart computer. I know you so well that I can predict your actions 95% of the time, but it's the other five percent that scares me. You're my heart, Dylan. If I ever lost you... I would lose my mind."

Abruptly she stood and stalked off the Command deck. Dylan and Beka exchanged a look. Both of them saw the tears in the avatar's eyes. Rommie left a still quiet in her wake and everyone sat as if frozen.

At last Dylan rose. "It's been fun, people, but I say we call it a night." He walked out and the rest followed slowly, trickling back to their quarters for the night. They had been given a lot of food for thought tonight. They had also, whether they knew it or not, become closer together. The seven were well on their way to becoming more than a crew. More like a family.


End file.
